Stopping Government Bloating

If you improve the efficiency of tax collection, what happens? The extra money is used to expand the size of government.

That’s the view of Dr Stephen Kirchner, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, in a new paper, “Why Does Government Grow?”

He makes the point that a lot of effort is made to improve the efficiency of tax collection, but the same rigour is not given when examining how effectively the money is spent. The danger, he suggests, is that we move from a position of citizen over state, where government responds to our needs, to a situation of state over citizen, where politicians becoming more self-serving.

The answer is to ensure examination of tax reform includes equal analysis of how the money is spent — the tax and expenditure sides of the budget need to be reformed together to reduce the size and scope of government.

The NBN was one of the reasons Independent MP Rob Oakeshott sided with Labor. Now he sees the Coalition’s position has changed and he’s concerned about the lack of reliable information from the government.

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ABOUT PHIL

Phil Dobbie is a broadcaster and writer, with a wealth of business experience behind him too. He was a partner in an ad agency, he's been the marketing head at various technology companies and ran the Australian operation of the British Tourist Authority.

But his real love is the creation of content - as a journalist for ZDNet and others. He likes to spend time behind the microphone, creating radio shows and podcasts - he's done thousands of them, for CBS, National Australia Bank, BBC and CommsDay.

He's available to present radio shows and produce podcasts. Or any other exciting projects that come along.